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Since this site has been neglected for way too long, nearly since it's inception and everything I and the new web-maven try to do now, just makes it worse, I am pulling out to do more of my own work. David doesn't think the site is good for my health, and I think he is correct. I guess I will still be around from time to time though.

But I am still here, just not letting it take over my life. I am a fine-artist, after all!

Completed Stratton/Wheldon regime for aggressive secondary progressive MS in June 2007, after four years, three of which intermittent. Still improving bit by bit and no relapses since finishing treatment.

Here for my mother. She has been having neurological and other health problems that were unexplained for many years and just recently a test showed positive for Cpn and Mycoplasma. Still trying to understand more about Cpn, treatment and possibly start it soon.

Thank you Sarah for everything you have done for me and so many others via this site - you are amazing!!! David is right, it is very stressful to create & maintain this kind of a website. You have done a terrific job. I am glad that you will be still be here. I cannot imagine this site without you. Again, thank you Sarah!!!
Please post some of your new art here for us to enjoy and take a break from our tired bodies. Mia

It's not you, Sarah, it's Drupal. Big old software projects almost inevitably get into a state where it's hard to do anything with them. They get complicated, people add features without fully understanding the old code, which makes them even more complicated, and it's a downhill slide from there. People still use them, but at the cost of increasing amounts of time and effort. It takes a lot of discipline to avoid such a state of affairs, and most projects don't have it.
Leaving Drupal wouldn't mean abandoning the old contents of the site; at the very least they could be converted into static web pages, though preferably one would find forum software that could import them from Drupal's database.

Norman, I am going to look into that because I am not looking forward to the fact that in a few years there will be Drupal 9. The first web man I found said that this site 2as still using bits of Drupal 6, which apparently is not a good idea

If I could find someone to convert the site to different software, without bankrupting us, I would jump at it, but my website builder at easyspace has said that the site is so heavy that it would cost thousands! I have found a place that will convert from Drupal to WordPress though, so will look into that later..

By the way, I am back, but just trying not to post so much!

Completed Stratton/Wheldon regime for aggressive secondary progressive MS in June 2007, after four years, three of which intermittent. Still improving bit by bit and no relapses since finishing treatment.

Wordpress is another big old monster written in PHP, so converting to it would not be much improvement. To run it, you have to keep on top of the security fixes; of the blogs I read, the only ones that have been hacked have been ones running Wordpress, and these aren't dummies. None of them were hacked recently, but the stream of Wordpress vulnerabilities has kept flowing:

Wordpress also doesn't have Drupal's feature of remembering what you've read so that it can tell you which replies are new.

The piece of discussion forum software that is attractive to me is Discourse (www.discourse.org). It's a fresh design, by good people (e.g. Jeff Atwood of the "Coding Horror" blog), using modern web techniques. Rather than having to click to get to the next page of a discussion, for instance, additional replies automatically load in the same page when you scroll to the bottom. And it does remember what you've read. They have a Drupal import script, though it doesn't go as far as getting incoming links to the old URLs to work; that'd be an additional battle.

At this point, though, the present Drupal installation seems like it's good enough. I'm just saying, if it seems like you're doing battle with a monster, that's because you are. It may still be worth chopping another tentacle or two off the beast, but discussion forum software doesn't have to be this bad.

Thanks Norman, I have come to this conclusion myself and since it is only really the messaging which isn't working, I should ask our new web developer to delete the messaging forum and reinstal it. When we have done the available updates, messaging might be better!

Completed Stratton/Wheldon regime for aggressive secondary progressive MS in June 2007, after four years, three of which intermittent. Still improving bit by bit and no relapses since finishing treatment.

HD, I am still here and today Pinky and I installed a new messaging module. I will send you a message about your print in the morning!

Completed Stratton/Wheldon regime for aggressive secondary progressive MS in June 2007, after four years, three of which intermittent. Still improving bit by bit and no relapses since finishing treatment.